Blind tasting is an important tool for wine evaluation. When you taste blind – that is, you don’t know what wine is in the glass – you can’t be swayed by the wine’s brand or price. That’s why all the wine competitions I know of involve blind tasting.

As much as possible, I taste blind, too, as do many wine critics – though not all. The critics who don’t taste blind will tell you that they’re not influenced by knowing the identity of the wine. I would refer those people to a recent study from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and California Institute of Technology.

The study found that the more expensive a wine is perceived to be, the more likely a person is to enjoy it. The study participants didn’t just report enjoying the pricier wines more; MRI scans showed that their brains experienced more pleasant sensations.

Specifically, they enjoyed a cabernet sauvignon identified as costing $90 a bottle (its real price) more than they enjoyed the same wine when they were told it cost $10. They also preferred a wine that supposedly cost $45 to the same wine when it was said to cost $5 (the real price). The experiment also included several other cabs of varying prices.

The subjects were by no means wine experts. They were young men in their 20s who reported liking red wine and drinking it at least occasionally. Would an expert recognize that the $90 bottle and the $10 bottle were actually the same wine? There’s no way to know, based on this study. But I’ve tasted blind with more than one winemaker who couldn’t identify his or her own wines when they were poured alongside bottles from other wineries.

British wine writer and Master of Wine Jancis Robinson writes about the value of blind tasting in her memoir “Tasting Pleasure” (Penguin, 342 pp., $15.95). “Blind tasting,” she says, “is a truly humbling experience and teaches us all just how heavily influenced we are by labels and reputations rather than inherent quality.”

This shouldn’t really come as a surprise. It’s a long-held tenet of psychology that expectation influences perception.

“Because perceptions of quality are known to be positively correlated with price, the individual is likely to believe that a more expensive wine will probably taste better,” the study’s authors wrote. “The main hypothesis of this study was that an increase in the perceived price of a wine should, through an increase in taste expectations, increase activity” in the brain.

Other studies involving a variety of foods and beverages have shown how expectations influence perception. As far back as 1964, researchers found that a consumer’s preference for his or her favorite beer vanishes if the labels are removed; more recently, a study found that consumers like strawberry yogurt and cheese spreads more if they were labeled “full fat” rather than “low fat.”

But back to the subject of price and quality. One of the factors that goes into wine pricing is the notion of perceived quality. In his autobiography, “Ernest and Julio: Our Story” (Times Books), the late Ernest Gallo recounted his efforts after Prohibition ended to sell wine to a New York rabbi for 50 cents a gallon. Too cheap, the rabbi said.

“How about 90 cents a gallon?” Gallo said, offering the rabbi a taste of the same wine from a different bottle. The rabbi bought 100 barrels.

It’s even more common to use price to make a statement at the high end of the market. Want consumers to think your wine is the best of the best? Give it a lofty price tag. Charge too much less than your competition and potential customers might think you put out an inferior wine. Sommeliers say that it’s hard to sell a wine that’s priced too low. That great bargain on the list at $24 will sell more briskly if it’s priced at $30.

Anyone who’s a regular taster or drinker of wine knows that price is no guarantee of quality. Sure, the $100 bottle of Napa cabernet probably is more intense and flavorful than the Two-Buck Chuck cab. But is a $40 cab “better” than one that costs $20? Not necessarily.

It’s not at all uncommon for me to taste a dozen wines and, when their identities are revealed, find that the most expensive wine wasn’t the one that I found most interesting or the “best.” With some wines, like chardonnay, I often think the more moderately priced bottle tastes better because it’s not all tricked out with flourishes like lots of new oak.

The famous Paris Tasting of 1976, in which a pair of California wines were deemed superior to some of the best wines of France, was conducted blind. When the results were announced, the French judges were chagrined, and at least one tried to get her scorecards back. Despite their scores, some of the judges nevertheless declared that the French wines were still superior.

Just imagine how different the results would have been if the judges had known all along the identities of the wines they were tasting.

Intuitive Surgical paid $30.4 million in cash on March 5 for a more than three-decade-old building about two blocks from its current headquarters, which are on Kifer Road in Sunnyvale, according to Santa Clara County property records.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said in a letter sent Thursday to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone that the administration has failed to produce documents tied to Kushner and other officials despite requests from the committee since 2017.